The present invention relates generally to telecommunications, and in particular, to a method and system for passing information tokens to and from customer terminal equipment.
Many organizations and businesses provide services and information using telephonic interactive voice response (IVR) and/or automated call distribution (ACD) systems. As is known in the art, these systems iterate a caller through a menu of voice prompts to gather information from the caller. Typically, the caller can enter the requested information by either spoken response or touch-tone dialing. In the case of an IVR system, the entered information is used to provide an automated service to the caller, such as the playback of pre-recorded information, or the automated sale of goods or services. In an ACD system, the caller information can be used to route the caller to a specific operator and/or to provide caller information to the operator prior to servicing the call. Although conventional IVR and ACD systems represent a significant improvement over manually-operated dial-up service centers, repeat callers often find the interactive menus to be tiresome and overly time-consuming. Specifically, on subsequent calls, repeat callers typically find themselves entering much of the same data entered during earlier calls, such as their names, addresses, phone numbers, and the like.
To overcome the problem of repetitive data entry, information service systems have been developed that store personalized information of individual callers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,459 discloses an information service system that stores personalized profiles for callers. The ""459 system relies on a unique identifier received during call setup to automatically retrieve the caller""s profile. The profile can include generic information about the caller, such as name, address, or the like, as well as particular information about the caller""s previous selection or use history. Accordingly, the pre-existing profiles can reduce call processing delays and eliminate redundant data entry for repeat callers.
However, the ""459 system suffers a drawback in that it must store and maintain profiles for a multitude of callers. This not only requires substantial computer storage resources, but also presents a problem of maintaining the data integrity of the profiles. For example, a caller, having previously used the service, may move, causing a change in home address and phone number. This would require the service provider to update the caller""s profile. As such, storing caller profiles within the service system can increase operating costs. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system of providing an automated dial-up service that enjoys the benefits of caller profiles, but reduces the burden of maintaining and storing such profiles.